Washington: While political attention in the United States last week was focused on Hillary's emails and the Republican Party's attempts to derail nuclear negotiations with Iran, the National Rifle Association enjoyed yet another victory.
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This time America's most powerful lobby group managed to block a move to ban the free sale of armour-piercing bullets for handguns.
The so-called green tip ammunition – which is designed to pierce helmets and body-armour – has long been legal in America for use in AR–15 rifles. These are the military-style semi-automatic rifles that have become the most popular hunting and self-defence weapons in the nation after their high-profile use in the massacres in a Sandy Hook primary school and a Colorado cinema.
The so-called M855 round, also known as the "cop killer", is now the second most popular ammunition for use in America's most popular rifle.
One popular recent YouTube video shows a man firing a green tip round through nearly 6.35 millimetres of steel and into a wooden log in his back yard.
But recently the industry developed a handgun variant of the AR-15 that can fire the armour piercing rounds. The federal agency charged with regulating the industry, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (one t-shirt popular at American gun shows suggests that the ATF should be a supermarket rather than a government agency) decided to act, on the grounds that even if hunters may legally use armour piercing rounds, they remain illegal for use in handguns.
What followed was a textbook demonstration of the extent of the power wielded by the NRA and the way it uses that power.
Within hours of the ATF announcing it was considering acting on the ammunition on February 13, the NRA's lobbying arm, the NRA Institute for Legislative Affairs and contacted those members of Congress either sympathetic to or fearful of the organisation. Majorities of the House and Senate immediately backed the NRA's position, some even began drafting legislation to strip the ATF of its power to regulate ammunition.
Around 60 of them signed a letter to the AFT arguing that the armour piercing rounds fell squarely into the "sporting purposes" of the relevant legislation and unless people had access to bullets as well as guns their second amendment rights would be infringed.
The NRA argued that if the rounds were withdrawn from sale to the general public their price would increase and availability would shrink, therefore it would be harder for police to buy the ammunition for training. If cop killers were taken off the street, it argued, cops could be endangered.
The group also contacted its broader membership – of between four and five million – and invited them to contact their members of Congress. Within three weeks 80,000 people wrote submissions opposing the ban.
Conservative media fell into line, attacking the Obama administration for its assault on the second amendment right to bear arms. For its part the Obama administration, which had promised action on gun control after the murder of Sandy Hook's children, remained timidly silent.
The ATF's capitulation was fast, complete and humiliating. "You spoke, we listened," the agency mewled via tweet last week.
In keeping with the standard playbook the NRA and its most reliable supporters then took a lap of honour in press releases.
This, said the NRA-ILA boss Chris Cox, was "a significant victory for our five million members and tens of millions of supporters across the country."
He thanked senior congressional Republicans for "leading the fight against this unconstitutional attack on our Second Amendment freedoms."
NRA members should, "take pride in again proving the power of personal involvement in the fight for Second Amendment Rights."
All that was needed now was for members to continue to fight to ensure that a gun-friendly president was elected in 2016.
There was another predictable outcome of the ATF's feeble gesture and the NRA's inevitable crushing victory.
Gun stores made a killing.
Clark Brothers Guns, an hour or so south of Washington, DC, in Virginia, does not even sell armor piercing ammo, but nonetheless when news broke that the issue had even been raised the queues formed, and all the AR-15 ammo walked out the door, Mitch Clark told Fairfax Media.
Just as the AR-15 rifles themselves do after the massacres.
